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PS, should we chuck around suggestions in this forum before emailing ttcombat???

For me the most urgent thing is that Shalatari do not work with the approach types, most of the stats are fine but Shaltari break the missions as they are now and with them Drop and Shoot is rather strong and requires little skill from the Shaltari side to work a bit to well.

1) Cleaner CQB with step by step order of operations for any squad in a building.2) Suggested moving CQB to the end of the round.3) Possibly reducing Battlegroups in Class to 5 and 6 for battle.4) Less fiddly rolling for Flame and other such effects.5) Allowing a greater number of Infantry or Standard Battlegroups in Clash and Battle.6) Removing "everyone shoots at once" from the game... including Shaltari if needed.

Lorn wrote:For me the most urgent thing is that Shalatari do not work with the approach types, most of the stats are fine but Shaltari break the missions as they are now and with them Drop and Shoot is rather strong and requires little skill from the Shaltari side to work a bit to well.

Cheers Lorn,

I have not played with or against shaltari in v2, what is the fix needed? Increase cost of gates? By how much?

"To elaborate on that the way the rules are currently worded in T1 Shaltari can only deploy aircraft as the "aerial advantage" rule puts the rest of the army in reserve (including havens). Which makes for rather boring first turnson the flip side, the reserve rules affect Shaltari a lot less, T2 reserves currently do not differ from non-reserves for them and even T3 are only a minor hinderance as you can simply gate them to the frontline while other factions have to fly on the tableThe last one is mostly an issue with the approach type system which I personally see little point in as it also leads to bloated HQ groups (those always show up T1)."

Frankly if they leave the Approach types as they are we are going to see a lot of maxed out HQ groups possibly with double HQs for some factions. Also as stated above Shaltari are not affected by reserves the same way other factions are, for that they pay with the most boring T1 possible. Lastly DnS in combination with gates is rather nasty (in particular with Flame weapons) as it can be very likely to create situations where the opponent can do everything correct and still be punished due to the game mechanics as you cannot plan around the locations of certain units as you can with other factions (or at least to an extremely reduced degree).

shaltari walkers should revert to 5+ passive saves.Scourge Corsairs are too much a kill points liability

I agree on those.

Phr Phobos should revert to 3+ shooting accuracy.

While I think 2+ is not ideal it should be improved compared to it´s current position maybe with a point drop instead.

Ground transports shouldn't give a +1 search bonus

Disagree on that one, one of the main ideas of V2 was to make APCs viable unless there is a better idea I am for it. Though I think some APCs might have to pay a point increase for it (Havens spring to mind) if they where already viable. We played some V2 games it lead to a good mix of APC based Infantry and light Dropship based ones. Mainly APCs for basic troops and light Dropships for Elites.

I know that, originally, Dave imaged the game being much more infantry heavy, with vehicles for support, and that was how the HW guys all played. When the game got out into the wild, the player base went much more vehicle heavy with less infantry.

The search bonus looks very much like Dave is trying to give us more reason to field infantry and ground transports for them the way he imagined the game being played. I don't see any issue with that.

Other than that, though, I've not had time or opportunity to read the V2 rules, let alone get in any play time, so that's all I can contribute.

aags_jim7 wrote:Tactics aren't something to bitch about. They're what separate games from just rolling dice in a parking lot.

I think the horde rule is better for encouraging APC use (over 3 bases infantry in the unit +1 search) - it gives every faction a option and points cost to play and units that size need APC's for transport. PHR don't have a horde option, but do have mercury drones - so again, a choice and points cost to play and every army in the same boat.

As is it just works out as a massively useful free search bonus for Shaltari (and to a lesser extent resistance) and in non objective games represents a liability for an all comers list.

For example, as a PHR player I cant see I would ever have more than 2 APC's that would (both) be able to reach possibly one objective by turn 2 (two Juno's, 2 2man Units of Immortals, Neptune) - That's 208 pts (half the troops budget) before you even look at units like Sirens, Valkyries where it becomes prohibitively expensive and light dropships are clearly the better option. Shaltari armies regularly rock 4-5 Havens, which are harder to kill, more effective transports, faster and can cover multiple objectives really easily.

There is not really an option to spend more, as you need AA (D+S makes decent AA coverage much more important), you need a HQ, and you need Anti Tank (plus the associated transports). There isn't a lot of leeway in those points to squeeze in lots of APC's as is. Seems a really unfair rule to me.

I do think 2+ on Phobos is a bit too good, but I also think Phobos 0n a 3+ is too expensive for what they offer....So its a tricky one, but I think a points drop would be the best option.

(PS. Sorry if the above seems anti Shaltari - but I think the new rules overall work out a bit too well for Shaltari "As is", but thats the problem with having a faction that plays with such radicaly different mechanic to everyone else I guess)